Journey in life isn't about car you drive

MY TURN -Long-ago trip across country in Gremlin taught lessons about what is important.

MY TURN -Long-ago trip across country in Gremlin taught lessons about what is important.

June 27, 2007|JUDY BRADFORD

All the talk about smaller cars, to save fuel, got me thinking the other day about the Gremlin. If you're too young to remember, the Gremlin was the first American subcompact car. It was made by American Motors Corp. in the 1970s, and as its name suggests, it was kind of cute -- even elfish-looking, with its perfectly round, small headlights as eyes. My brother had one. It was white with blue racing stripes. In June 1976, he and I left Cincinnati in it and kept on driving. Both of us needed to get away. His divorce had just been finalized, and he was between jobs. I was still in college, but hadn't landed a newspaper internship for the summer. Sure, it sounds a little weird, heading cross-country with my brother. But basically, we were two hippies with a lot of deep thinking to do: He, about what had gone wrong in his marriage, and me, about what I was going to do with the Rest of My Life, after graduation. Our trip down to Texas, across to California and then all the way back again took about eight weeks in that little car. No air conditioning, no cup holders in all the right places, no music-playing gadgets to make long trips more bearable. It was a stick shift, so I learned how to drive a standard transmission without even having a practice run. We camped in state and national parks, or stayed with family or friends all over the country. When I left, I had $400 in my pocket. College students didn't have credit cards back then. Gas was around 60 cents a gallon. We ate a lot of Bisquick and baked beans. When we hit west Texas, we had a flat tire on a 100-mile stretch of road notorious for having no service stations. As we started unloading all our gear to find the jack, under a baking sun, a tough old guy in a pickup truck with a heavy-duty hydraulic jack came by and lifted the car up for us. We were on our way in minutes. He said he used the highway a lot, and looked out for people in trouble. A journal I kept indicates that we talked with a lot of Mexicans coming across the border to work. Immigration issues aren't new today. Someone told us that the American dollar was worth 12 times its value in Mexico. No wonder they wanted to work here. That same journal tells me that somewhere in the hills of San Francisco, the clutch on the Gremlin broke down. We complained a little about having to spend $26 to get it fixed, and $15 for a cheap motel. EDITOR: KATHERINE SANDERSON (574) 235-6330 OR (800) 552-2795; E-MAIL: PHMCOMMUNITY@SBTINFO.COMCYAN MAGENTA YELLOW BLACK EDITION 50R In that same state, California, we got free lodging for a week at a ranch for recovering drug addicts. We weren't drug addicts, but they desperately needed help getting their vegetable garden back into shape. So we pulled weeds for six days straight, and hung out at night playing guitars, singing and talking about God. Coming back from California, I saw Yosemite for the first time. I thought it was the most beautiful place on earth, and vowed to go back there as a committed backpacker, instead of a day hiker. (I still haven't made it back.) In another campground, somewhere in Kansas, we found out how small the world is. Some other campers were from Ohio, too, so we struck up a conversation. Come to find out, they were from the same hometown, and they had known our dad, who died when we were kids. When we got back to the Cincinnati area in early August, I had $20 left in my pocket. As I look back, I realize that what we did was a great idea. I would never be able to make that trip for that price, ever again. But what that Gremlin did was even better. It got us across 18 states with only one flat tire, and one busted clutch, which was easily fixed. It helped us learn three things: Live simply. Live in the present. Never forget where you came from. I got an internship the following summer, which led to a full-time job at a newspaper in northern Ohio. My brother met a nice gal and remarried a year later. When I talk with 20-somethings now, and they're contemplating some big trip, or joining the Peace Corps before settling down to their career, I always tell them to go for it. They'll have the rest of their lives to work. They may never have eight, 10, or 12 weeks with nothing else to do but find themselves. I know the journey in life isn't about the kind of car you drive. It's about the people you meet along the way, and how you listen and respond to them. But if you see a Gremlin in a junkyard, or for sale somewhere locally, give me a call. I'd just like to go stare at it, and think. Judy Bradford is a correspondent for The Tribune.